Dangling Man

by Saul Bellow

March 17

  Washed and shaved and rode downtown to meet Iva. I walked from Van Buren to Randolph Street on the park side of Michigan Boulevard, past the Art Institute lions and the types enjoying cigarettes in the watery sunlight and the shimmering exhaust gas, after a long winter in the interior. The leached grass is beginning to take on a weak yellow in some spots, and there are a few green stubs of iris showing, nearly provoking me into saying: “Go back, you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  March 18

  No mail in the box. Except for the paper that lies scrambled over the bed and the passing of an occasional soldier or military truck in the street, we are insulated here from the war. If we chose, we could pull the blinds and fling the paper into the hall for Marie to gather up, casting it out utterly.

  March 19

  Nevertheless, spring begins on Sunday. I always experience a rush of feeling on the twenty-first of March. “Thank heavens, I’ve made it again!”

  March 22

  I carried out my threat and walked in the park in my spring coat, and suffered for it. It was a slaty, windy day with specks of snow sliding through the trees. I stopped at a tavern on the way back and treated myself to a glass of rye.

  Because of Mrs. Kiefer, we could not listen to the Philharmonic in the afternoon, so, after lolling on the bed eating oranges and reading the magazines and the Sunday features, we set out at four o’clock for the movies. As we stood buttoning our coats in the hall, in came Vanaker in his bowler and polka-dot muffler, carrying a bag in which bottles rattled.

  “Sacre du Vin Temps” I smiled.

  We had a late dinner and turned in at eleven. Vanaker coughed boozily all through the night and awakened me near dawn, banging doors and making his customary splash.

  March 23

  Mr.Ringholm moved out last week. His room has been rented by a Chinese girl. Her trunk came from International House this morning. I read the tag—Miss Olive Ling.

  March 24

  A Picture postcard of Times Square from Steidler on the hall table this morning, with the message: “I am thinking of stopping here indefinitely.” Probably he has already run through his brother’s money.

  Mrs. Bartlett was beckoning to me as I was going upstairs; she asked if I would help her carry up a cot from the storeroom. She was going to sleep downstairs with Mrs. Kiefer henceforward. I descended with her. She had already pulled the folding bed from the musty wood closet across half the length of the cellar. In the hot light of the furnace grating, her face, the face of an overgrown country girl, with large, slightly protruding front teeth that lent it a kind of innocence, was rather prepossessing. I was glad she had asked me to help her. “Take it from the bottom, that’s it. Now. Up. I’ll go first.” She puffed out her instructions. “Lord, they should make these contraptions of wood.” We struggled up with it and carried it into the room where the old woman lay, her white hair arranged in a fringe that nearly met her brow. Kitty wore hers that way. Mrs. Kiefer’s cheeks were collapsed and her face was moist. It reminded me of a loaf, before the baker puts it in the oven, smeared with white of egg. I went into the hall quickly.

  “Thanks,” Mrs. Bartlett whispered loudly from the dark square inlet of the lower hall. “Thanks loads.” And her teeth shone up at me good-naturedly.

  March 25

  Morning began dull and numb, then brightened miraculously. I tramped the neighborhood. It was warm in earnest at one o’clock, with a tide of summer odors from the stockyards and the sewers (odors so old in the city-bred memory they are no longer repugnant).

  In the upper light there were small fair heads of cloud turning. The streets, in contrast, looked burnt out; the chimneys pointed heavenward in openmouthed exhaustion. The turf, intersected by sidewalk, was bedraggled with the whole winter’s deposit of deadwood, match cards, cigarettes, dogmire, rubble. The grass behind the palings and wrought-iron frills was still yellow, although in many places the sun had already succeeded in shaking it into livelier green. And the houses, their doors and windows open, drawing in the freshness, were like old drunkards or consumptives taking a cure. Indeed, the atmosphere of the houses, the brick and plaster and wood, the asphalt, the pipes and gratings and hydrants outside, and the interiors—curtains and bedding, furniture, striped wallpaper and horny ceilings, the ravaged throats of entry halls and the smeary blind eyes of windows—this atmosphere, I say, was one of an impossible hope, the hope of an impossible rejuvenation.

  Nevertheless, a few large birds, robins and grackles, appeared in the trees, and some of the trees themselves were beginning to bud. The large rough cases cracked at the tip, showing sticky green within, and one tree was erupting in crude red along its higher branches. I even saw in a brick passageway an untimely butterfly, out of place both in the season and the heart of the city, and somehow alien to the whole condition of the century.

  And there were children, on skates and bicycles, or scouting along the curbs for salvage, playing ball or hopping after bits of glass in chalk squares. There was a showing of ice-cream cones, despite the inroads of rationing, and a sprinkling of spring articles, though infants still wore wool leggings and the elderly were fully buttoned and somberly hatted. Sound was magnified and vision enlarged, red was rough and bloody, yellow clear but thin, blue increasingly warm. All but the sun’s own yellow that ripped up the middle of each street, making two of everything that stood—object and shadow.

  The room, when I returned to it, was as full of this yellow as an egg is of yolk. In honor of the transformation in the weather, I decided to clean up for supper and, as I stood changing my shirt in the unaccustomed brilliance of the mirror, I observed new folds near my mouth and, around my eyes and the root of my nose, marks that had not been there a year before. It is not pleasant to find such changes. But, tying my tie, I shrugged them off as inevitable, the price of experience, an outlay that had better be made ungrudgingly, since it was bound in any case to be collected.

  March 26

  We had been short of funds for several days. Iva received her check on Thursday but, instead of cashing it, brought it home and left it in my bureau drawer with instructions to take it to the bank. The reason she gave for not taking it to the currency exchange downtown, as usual, was that this week she was working evenings in the reference room and did not want to risk carrying such a sum home. She had heard rumors of holdups.

  But I refused to go to the near-by bank with it.

  I had had several experiences there with Iva’s checks. I had been turned down twice last fall; once because I had insufficient identification and, again, when the vice president, looking from my cards to me and from me to my cards, once more said, “How do I know you’re this person?”

  I replied, “You can take my word for it.”

  He did not smile; I did not rate a smile. But the indications were that under different circumstances—say, if I had been clean-shaven and my shirt had not been frayed, or if bits of torn lining had not shown from my coat sleeve—my words would have evoked one. He sat back seriously and considered the check. He was a plump man, about thirty years old. Mr. Frink stood in brass letters on the wooden block at his finger tips; his clean sandy hair was already fading back in two broad freckled arches. He would be bald within a few years, his bare head spotted with those blackish freckles.

  “That’s a city check, Mr. … Frink, is it?” He acknowledged the name. “Certainly there isn’t much risk in accepting a city check.”

  “If you know who the endorser is,” said Mr. Frink, unclasping his pen and shuffling professionally through my cards with one hand. “Now, where do you work, Joseph?”

  In such cases I generally answer that I am working at Inter-American; it is an impressive reference and not a wholly false one; Mr. Mallender would stand behind me, I am sure. But because he addressed me by my first name, as though I were an immigrant or a young boy or a Negro, I said—dismissing diplomacy without a second thought—“I’m not working anywhere now. I’m waiting for my draft c
all.”

  Of course, that finished my prospects. He immediately said, reassembling his pen, that the bank did not make a practice of cashing the checks of nondepositors. He was sorry.

  I gathered up my cards.

  “Here, you’ll notice that I have a surname, Frink,” I said, holding one of the cards up. “I realize it’s difficult to deal with the public efficiently and still politely. All the same, people don’t like to be treated like suspicious characters and patronized at the same time.” I made an effort to control myself as I said this, but when I ended I saw that several bystanders were looking at me. Frink seemed more alarmed by my tone than by my words. I am not sure he understood them, but he faced me as if to show that in him I menaced a courageous man. It was a foolish incident. A year ago I would have accepted his explanation politely and have moved away.

  Too late, I stuffed the check into my pocket and, without another glance at Frink, I walked off.

  Naturally, when I came to explain my reasons for not going back to the bank I could not tell Iva all of the story. I said merely that I had been turned down twice and did not want it to happen a third time.

  “Oh, now, Joseph, why should there be any trouble about it? I’ve cashed hundreds of checks.”

  “But they turned me down. And it’s as embarrassing as anything can be.”

  “I’ll give you my identification disk. All you have to do is show it.”

  “I won’t do it,” I said.

  “Then go somewhere else. Go to the currency exchange, the one near Lake-Park Avenue.”

  “Before they do business with you there, they make you fill out a long, long form. They want to know everything … where you’re employed. If I say I’m not working, they’ll laugh me out of the place. ‘What? Not working? Anybody can get a job these days.’ No, I won’t go. Why don’t you cash it downtown?”

  “I’m not going to carry all that money late at night. It’s out of the question. If I’m held up, we’ll have to borrow from your father or mine, or from Amos.”

  “Have you ever been held up?”

  “You know I haven’t been.”

  “Then why have you suddenly begun to worry about it?”

  “You read two papers a day, from front to back. You ought to know. There’ve been holdups.”

  “Pooh! Two people. And not near here, either, but miles away, up on Sixtieth Street.”

  “Joseph, are you or are you not going to cash this check?”

  “No,” I said.

  Perhaps I should have told her about my experience with Mr. Frink. Then, at any rate, the reason for my refusal would have been clear. But she would have been just as angry. She would have been in the right, hence very severe. And, although she would have excused me from returning to the bank, it is likely that she would have made things hard for me in other ways. Therefore I said nothing about it.

  “All right,” she said. “The check will stay in the drawer. We won’t eat.”

  “I can stand it if you can.”

  “I’m quite sure you can stand it. You’d have to be as weak as … as Gandhi before you’d give in. You’re mulish.”

  “I don’t think you have much right to call me mulish. As if you weren’t twice as stubborn. I don’t feel like fighting about it, Iva. That’s the truth. I can’t go. I have my reasons.”

  “You always have reasons, and with principles. Capital P,” she said, tracing the letter on the air with her finger.

  “Don’t be a fool. Do you think it’s pleasant to walk up to a bank window and be turned away?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t get into a fight of some kind over there?” she asked shrewdly. “I have a suspicion. …”

  “Your suspicion is wrong. You always jump to the worst conclusion you can think of. If I wanted to do that … well.”

  “Well?”

  “I’d say plenty.”

  “For example.”

  “You want me to do all kinds of things I was never expected to do before. Now, why this sudden fear of being robbed? I could say you trumped it up. You’ve been carrying money for years, and larger amounts, too. Suddenly it frightens you. Well, the reason is that you want me to run errands.”

  “Errands?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s have the whole thing. You must have a principle hidden somewhere.

  “Don’t make fun of me, Iva. Things have changed. You’ve become the breadwinner, and whether you know it or not you resent the fact that I stay at home while you go to work every morning. So you think up things for me to do. You want me to earn my keep.”

  “Of all the things to say.” Iva grew white. “I never know what you’re going to do. You go along quietly and all of a sudden you come out with something, something … it’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “It happens to be true.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “You aren’t aware of it yourself, Iva. I’m not blaming you. But you are the provider. After all, it’s bound to have an effect on you. …”

  “You’re having an effect on me. You’re making me sick.”

  “No, listen to me, Iva,” I persisted. “I’m not making this up. I see it and feel it constantly. I know you don’t want it to be true, but it is, nevertheless. You take it for granted that I have nothing to do. Every morning you leave half a dozen orders for me. And just a while ago you mentioned that I read the papers.”

  “How you twist everything around,” Iva said bitterly.

  “Not as much as you think.”

  She reached for her handkerchief.

  “Just as soon as I take up a subject you don’t like, you begin to cry. Don’t you want me to say anything about this?”

  “I can depend on you not to keep quiet when yon think you’re being wronged. You think everybody’s trying to take advantage of you. Even I …” and she could not continue.

  “This is what happens whenever I bring up a disagreeable subject. I’m just trying to point out something I don’t think you’re aware of. I thought you wanted me to tell you such things. You never used to object.”

  “You never used to be so mean and ugly-tempered. You …” Now she broke off and began to cry.

  “Jesus, Jesus! Can we never have a talk without a flood of tears? It’s easy for you to cry. But what can I do? I’m getting out. I should get out for good. This is no sort of life. Stop that crying!” She did try to stop; her efforts ended in a grotesque sound brought up from her throat. She rolled over on the bed and concealed her face from me.

  Up to this point in our quarrel, Vanaker had given several protesting coughs, and now I heard his footsteps in the hall as he went to the bathroom and then, just as I had expected, the sound through the open door, of his splash, growing louder as he trained his stream to the center where the water was deepest. Shuffling off my slippers, I stepped out stealthily and advanced on his silhouette. When he turned, hearing me, my foot was already in the door. He had neglected to turn on the light, but I could see perfectly clearly by the small bulb outside. In the semidark, a look of panic sprang to his moist, drunken eyes, and he pushed against me, but I was solidly planted on the threshold.

  “Took you in it at last, didn’t I!” I exclaimed. “You damned old whisky-head. By God, I’ve had more than I can stand. There’s a dying woman downstairs, and you slam around here all boozed up, raising as much hell as you please.”

  “Joseph,” Iva called in a strained voice. She had come into the hall. “Joseph!”

  “It’s about time I told him off. I’m fed up. Completely. Do you think you can get away with it forever?” I shouted at him. “Kicking up a racket in the middle of the night, hoicking, forcing us to listen when you make your business, you crowbait? Didn’t you ever learn to shut the door when you went to the toilet? By God, you kept it shut tight enough the night you set the house on fire!”

  “Mister!” I heard Mrs. Bartlett cry from the stairs. A door closed. Iva had gone back into the room, and similar sounds told me that either Mr
s. Fessman or Miss Ling had come out to listen and then had quickly retreated. There were further noises from Captain Briggs’ apartment. I heard a man’s tread in the passage above.

  “And stealing, besides,” I went on.

  “Steal?” he said weakly.

  “Stealing,” I repeated. “Then going before the priest at St. Thomas the Apostle and standing in my socks and stinking of my wife’s perfume. I’ve got a good mind to go and tell them about it there. How would you like that?” He stared dumbly, his head a long blob of shadow in the pewter gleam of the mirror on the medicine chest. Then he came forward a pace, hopefully, for the Captain was behind me in his dressing gown.

  “What are you doing?” he said sternly. Mrs. Briggs appeared at his side. “Fasten yourself up,” he ordered Vanaker, who thereupon took shelter behind the door.

  “Either he moves, or my wife and I. … We refuse to put up with him,” I said.

  “Now,” said the Captain. “You’ve done enough shouting. Calm down. They can hear you all over the house.”

  “It’s an outrage,” his wife breathed. “With my mother downstairs.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Briggs,” I said in a lower voice. “But I had as much as I could stand from him. I admit I lost myself.”

  “I should say.”

  “Just a minute, Mil,” the Captain interrupted. And then to me: “We can’t allow behavior of that sort here, and …”

  “What about his behavior?” I said excitedly. “It seems he can do as he pleases, but if I protest I am the one who’s blamed. Why don’t you ask him about it? What’s he skulking in there for?”

  “If you had complaints, you should have brought them to me or to my wife instead of making a row. This is not a tavern. …”

  “I put up with his indecency. I don’t care. It’s that kind of inconsiderateness,” I said disconnectedly.

  “This is terrible, shameful,” said Mrs. Briggs.

  “We can’t have this,” said the Captain, “we can’t have it. It’s the worst kind of rowdyism!”

  “Howard,” remonstrated Mrs. Briggs.